"The Mount of Olives," says Mons. La Martine, "slopes suddenly and rapidly down to the deep abyss, called the Valley of Jehoshaphat, which separates it from Jerusalem. From the bottom of this sombre and narrow valley, the barren sides of which are everywhere paved with black and white stones, the funereal stones of death, rises an immense hill, with so abrupt an elevation, that it resembles a fallen rampart: no tree here strikes its roots; no moss even can here fix its filaments. The slope is so steep that the earth and stones continually roll from it, and it presents to the eye only a surface of dry dust, as if powdered cinders had been thrown upon it. From the heights of the city, towards the middle of this hill, or natural rampart, rise high and strong walls of large stones, not externally sawed by the mason, which conceal their Hebrew and Roman foundations beneath the same cinders, and are here from fifty to one hundred, and further on, from two to three hundred feet in height. The walls are here cut by three city gates, two of which are fastened up, and the only one open before us seems as void and as desolate as if it gave entrance to an uninhabited town. The walls, rising again beyond this gate, sustain a large and vast terrace, which runs along two-thirds of the length of Jerusalem, on the eastern side; and, judging by the eye, may be a thousand feet in length, and five or six hundred in breadth. It is nearly level, except at its centre, where it sinks insensibly, as if to recall to the eye the _valley of little depth_, which formerly separated the hill of Sion from the city of Jerusalem. This magnificent platform, prepared no doubt by nature, but evidently finished by the hand of man, was the sublime pedestal upon which arose the temple of Solomon. It now supports two Turkish mosques." Acra Hill[316] rose to the north of Sion, the east side facing mount Moriah, on which the temple was situated, and from which this hill was separated only by a chasm, which the Asmoneans partly filled up by lowering the summit of Acra. As we are informed by Josephus, Antiochus Epiphanes erected a fortress upon it to overawe the city and the temple; which fortress, having a Greek or Macedonian garrison, held out against the Jews till the time of Simon, who demolished it, and at the same time levelled the summit of the hill. The east side of Mount Moriah[317] bordered the valley of Kedron, commonly called the Valley of Jehoshaphat, which was very deep: the south side, overlooking a very low spot, (the Tyropoeon,) was faced, from top to bottom, with a strong wall, and had a bridge going across the valley for its communication with Sion. The east side looked towards Acra, the appearance of which from the temple is compared by Josephus to a theatre; and on the north side an artificial ditch, says the same historian, separated the temple from a hill named Begetha, which was afterwards joined to the town, by an extension of its area.